


Black Vultures

by treefrogie84



Series: Take the love that I've embraced [3]
Category: Supernatural, Wayward Sisters (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Claire Novak is a Winchester, F/F, Leviathans, Purgatory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-17
Updated: 2019-02-17
Packaged: 2019-10-30 09:07:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17825870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/treefrogie84/pseuds/treefrogie84
Summary: It's time. Claire has waited long enough, she's going to get Kaia backnow, not matter what it takes.





	Black Vultures

**Author's Note:**

> Reminder: this series has been written completely out of order. You might want to reread things first.

“I need to get to Purgatory.” Claire sets down her coffee cup with a thump, staring across the table to Sam.

“What? Why?” Sam watches her for a moment before glancing out the diner window. Dean’s out there, she knows, waiting for Cas to show back up. This isn’t supposed to be more than a breakfast chat while heading towards different hunts. “You don’t know--”

“Did Jack tell you what he found?” she demands, tapping a finger against the side of her coffee cup. “It’s my fault she’s there, Sam. I never--” Claire pauses, takes a deep breath to hold back the tears. “What if it was Eileen, huh? Would you let her rot in Purgatory?”

Sam’s face shuts down, his jaw clenching. And, yeah, that was a low blow.

“Sorry,” she mutters.

“It’s--” he shakes his head, pushing his plate aside and wrapping his hands around his coffee cup. “It’s not that I think Kaia deserves it. You know that right?” He barely pauses before barreling on. “Or that I don’t think you can handle it. Purgatory is… it changes you. Who you are before you go in might not be who you are when you come back.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It means that it took _weeks_ for Dean to come down from three-sixty combat readiness. And when he did--”

“And when he did, it was just so you guys could fuck up the universe a different way. Yeah, I know.”

“You don’t know, Claire,” Sam snaps. “You’re not sleeping, barely talking-- you’re obsessed! We just-- I’m just worried, Claire. We all are.”

“Well, don’t be. I can take care of myself.”

“That has never been in question. But worrying is what us old folks do.” Sam looks out the window again. “Promise me that you’ll be careful. That you’ll take backup.”

“I’ll promise you whatever you want. Just tell me how to get there.”

Sam sighs before nodding, pulling out a pen and starting to draw on a napkin. “Ok, so here’s how we did it the first time…”

 

* * *

 

It takes weeks of dodging Jody and Donna’s calls, Dean’s new found insistence on helping her out on hunts, Sam’s worried looks, and, possibly worst of all, Alex’s blanket refusal to let her do any research at all on her own, before she finds a reaper willing to take her across.

“New management, ya know,” the Reaper-- Filip-- says, slowly turning over a chunk of dwarven gold. “The new boss… she doesn’t like us not playing strictly by the rules.”

Rolling her eyes, Claire reaches into her pocket, slides another chuck across the table of coffee shop. “Save me the speeches. If Billie gave a shit about you, this wouldn’t be happening at all. She would have stomped all over your neck.”

Filip widens his eyes before making both nuggets disappear. “How did you say you knew to contact a reaper?”

“Everyone knows that if you want to slip between the afterlives, you need a reaper’s help.”

“Somehow, I doubt that’s it,” he says dryly. “Who put you up to this? Heaven doesn’t have enough angels for quality control anymore, Hell doesn’t give a shit. So who’s paying your checks?” Filip reaches over, barely grazes his fingertips along the side of her hand before snatching his hand back. “Winchester.”

“Novak, actually.” She raises an eyebrow, nodding towards the pocket where he’d stashed her gold. “Do we have a deal?”

“Novak is definitely close enough. Do you think we don’t pay attention?” Filip pauses, calculating. “I’ll get you there. You’re on your own for getting back out. Death-- I have no interest in pissing her off, regardless of how well you pay me.”

“I just paid you twice what you said!”

“And you’re the nut job who wants to play tourist in God’s armpit. Do you know what happened to the last reaper who helped a Winchester get to Purgatory? Stabbed in the back by the King of Hell himself. I’m not keen on repeating Ajay’s mistakes.” Leaning back in his chair, he looks her up and down skeptically. “You’ll figure it out.”

Claire grumbles but accepts the deal. What else can she do? There’s no other way that doesn’t involve a lot more time. And that’s at a premium right now. It’s already been months since-- She strangles the thought, ignores it. “Fine. I need to grab some more gear first.”

“Of course.” Filip nods, following her out to her car.

She already has most of the gear she was planning on bringing packed into a bag. The only thing she still needs to shove in is her gun, and she’s not even sure she should bother. Dean was never particularly clear on if he just didn’t have one with him, if it didn’t work, or if there was some other problem.

Claire weighs it in her hand for a moment before shaking her head and shoving it under the driver’s seat. Pulling out her phone, she shoots a quick text to Alex-- just the location of her car and a request to get it back to Jody’s or the Bunker-- before sighing. “Okay. Let’s do this.”

Filip nods, resettling his jacket before leading the way to the tiny outdoor seating area around the back. Bright light explodes from behind the wooden gate, bringing tears to Claire’s eyes as the gate wavers before slowly peeling way, opening the way between planes of reality.

The walk between planes is longer than she expected-- a good fifteen minutes, instead of a near instantaneous step-- but Filip holds her hand tightly and pulls her along. She stumbles on the last step, landing on her knees in the middle of a dark forest.

“Thank you for your patronage,” Filip says smugly. “Enjoy your afterlife.” Snapping his fingers, he disappears.

 

* * *

 

Claire should have known that Dean was editing his stories, even when drunk. He always does. And it’s not like any of them had really pressed him-- the people with the right didn’t want to trigger a flashback and the people who needed to know didn’t have the right.

Combat twenty-four/ seven is true enough. What he’d left out was that nothing ever really died. Or maybe he didn’t notice in his obsession with finding Cas.

She can’t _not_ notice.

Crouching by the stream, Claire splashes water on her face and the back of her neck, scrubbing some of the blood and sweat off. She longs to go for a swim, but something long and scaley lives in the center of the channel, waiting for something to wander in. She’s already nearly drowned three times.

Her shapeshifting shadow crouches on the other bank a couple dozen feet upstream. It’s wearing Dean’s face right now, staring at her hungrily. “Listen, sweetheart. Just come ‘ere, and we’ll do this quick like. You won’t feel a thing.”

Claire growls. “Go bother someone else.”

It shifts, smoother than she’s ever seen one shift on Earth, and with a lot less mess, so it looks like Mom.

“Claire.” It watches her carefully. “I love you. Wouldn’t you rather be with your family again?”

Claire swallows, dries her hands on her jeans, and picks her hatchet back up. The ‘shifter has been following her for days, always looking like someone she loves, always trying to convince her that giving up is better.

Every time she kills it, it comes back faster. She’s already killed her dad, Jody, Donna, Dean, Sam… everyone she cares about, she’s shoved a knife into their heart, felt the fluttering of a heart slicing itself to ribbons on her blade.

It’s winning.

Sucking in a deep breath, she waits for it to jump the stream-- it’s deep, but only about six feet wide-- so they can start the game all over again.

The shifter jumps, changing faces as it goes. The stream monster flails an arm-tentacle-thing out, barely grazing the shifter’s ankle but sending it sprawling.

Dad pushes himself up, advancing slowly before Claire starts running.

It tackles her before she gets very far, knocking her feet out from under her and her hatchet goes flying into the rotting leaves at the base of a nearby tree.

The shifter presses her into the mud, bracketing her legs and planting a hand in the center of her back, so Claire can’t roll over. Claire struggles to reach one of the spare knives, finally managing to get the tip of one at her waist between her fingers.

Breathing out, she lets the shifter grind her face into the mud before pulling the knife, twisting it around, and shoving it into whatever bit of flesh she can catch.

The shifter recoils, leaning back, and giving Claire enough space to flip over.

Her knife is still buried in Not!Dad’s shoulder, but it’s neither silver nor big enough to do any lasting harm. Kicking herself out from under the shifter, Claire scrambles for her hatchet.

“I told you to fuck off,” Claire growls. “I don’t care. I’ll kill you again if I have to.”

The shifter throws its head back and laughs. “I know you will. And don’t you think that brings me joy? Another human in Purgatory and this one doesn’t even know what she’s looking for. I can wear you down and down and then, eventually, you’ll be mine.”

“What?”

“We don’t need to eat here anymore than you do, little one. But you’re enormous fun.” The shifter’s face flickers, changing appearances into someone wholly unfamiliar.

“Fuck you,” Claire spits into the bearded face, swinging her hatchet. The shifter’s head rolls one way, its hat another, and the solid body falls backwards.

Claire wipes the axe head on the grey henley the shifter wears before plucking her knife from it’s shoulder and hurrying away.

She catches sight of someone pacing her in the brush to one side, carefully, subtly herding her towards the stream. Glancing around, Claire tightens her grip on the hatchet and takes a sudden turn towards the shape, rushing directly at it.

The shape, whatever it is, turns tail and runs, away from her, away from the stream.

Claire huffs a short laugh before glancing back over her shoulder-- towards the temporarily dead shifter-- and swallowing. She needs to get much much further away.

She finds a cave a few miles away, outside of what she thinks is the shifter’s territory. Even if it is, she can’t be sure that it won’t follow her, or she won’t pick up another stalker. Claire wedges herself into a smaller side cave, barely big enough for her to fit into, and lets herself doze for a little bit.

* * *

 

Kaia is sitting outside her cavern when Claire picks her way out the next… something.

“Rumor is that there’s a hunter in Purgatory,” Kaia says slowly. “Except this one isn’t torturing and killing her way through, isn’t demanding answers from everyone she sees and killing them if she doesn’t like the answer. This one runs and hides, and, if she searches for anything, she searches for her lost lover.”

“How the fuck--” Claire pulls the silver knife from her waistband, holding it tightly. “I’m fucking done with your bullshit. I’m gonna figure out how to kill you for real.”

Kaia scrambles backwards, away from her. “Claire, it’s me!”

“Because you haven’t tried that before, you sick bastard. Where the fuck do you get off?”

“You tell anyone who asks that the scar on your forehead is from a monster fight. It is. The monsters were the stairs, you tripped,” Kaia spills out. “You promised me we’d go together, but I jumped wrong and…”

“Kaia?” Claire says softly, wonderly. “I didn’t--”

“It’s okay.” Kaia shrugs, looks back over the plain ahead of them. “This place gets to you.”

“You didn’t jump wrong,” Claire grumbles, prying her fingers away from the knife hilt. “It was deliberate. I just don’t know why.”

“Because it was you or me, and I know which one I’d prefer,” Kaia says softly. “It was time. I’d done what needed to be done and you are so much more valuable than me and--”

“Shut up,” Claire says with a sob. “That’s bullshit.” Turning away, she looks over the landscape that surrounds them, trying to find anything that’s watching them. “We can hash it out later, when we’re not here. You ready to go?”

“Go where?” Kaia asks. “In case you missed it, we’re in Purgatory. There’s nowhere to go that doesn’t end up in combat or death or both.”

“Except I’m human,” Claire says smugly. “This place doesn’t want me here anymore than I want to be here. So we just have to find the exit.”

“You planned this.” Kaia reaches down, picks up her weapon-- some sort of mace looking thing-- and hoists it to her shoulder. “You knew--”

“I didn’t,” Claire admits. “I uh, went a bit off the rails, scared the crap out of everyone.”

Kaia frowns but doesn’t say anything else.

Claire knows she’s underplaying it. ‘Off the rails’ doesn’t even begin to describe it. She’d threatened Jack, for fuck’s sake. But if Kaia isn’t asking, she doesn’t feel much need to talk about it. It’s better now anyway. Jody and Alex can relax, let her live her life without constant babysitters.

They make good time towards the ridge. It’s much easier to escape and kill those hunting them with a partner.

All the same, Claire’s not entirely certain where they’re going. Dean’s stories-- when she could get him to talk about it in more than single word statements-- always ended at finding the portal at the top of some ridge. Kaia backed that up, pointing a couple days march away and saying there was a mountain range over that way.

But they’ve been walking-- zigzagging, really-- for days now, with no luck. Hell, they’ve not even reached this supposed range, let alone a portal.

Kaia yells next to her as something, a vampire maybe, jumps out from behind a hedge and drags her to the ground.

Claire jumps towards her, bringing her hatchet up, when it’s jerked from her hand, embedded in a nearby tree. She’s tossed in the other direction while the thing attacking her joins his friend.

Scrambling to her feet, she has a hard time focusing. The number of vampires attacking doubles, then goes back down, then wavers. Blinking rapidly, trying to clear her head, she watches as more vampires emerge from the underbrush, converging on Kaia.

Kaia screams as a spray of blood splashes across the nearest vampire’s face. Another one drops, headless, but then Claire is too caught up in battle rage to keep count.

It doesn’t matter how many they kick away or behead, there’s always another creature behind it, waiting to take its place. Eventually, Claire notices that they’re fighting something entirely new, black goo streaming from their eyes and noses.

They’re practically rubber, refusing to lose their heads, or respond to stab wounds or…

“Stop.” The order is spoken-- firmly, yes, but not shouted-- and the black goo monsters step back as one. Like they were one creature to begin with.

Claire watches in undisguised horror as Dick Roman-- or the leviathan wearing his face-- emerges from the surrounding hordes. He doesn’t look much different than when she last saw him on TV, more manic in his hunger, maybe, but still recognizably the same person. “How? They--”

“You can’t kill us, not really.” He sniffs. “Kill a monster, they return to Purgatory. Free a monster from Purgatory, they return to Earth. Where the cycle can begin again.” Clapping his hands, he grins toothily at them. “So let’s work this out, okay? Find solutions from a place of yes.”

“Yeah, I don’t think so,” Claire says. “We’re not going to let you back on Earth.”

Kaia steps closer for the first time in ages, taking Claire’s hand and intertwining their fingers before giving her a gentle tug. “C’mon,” she whispers urgently. “I can feel it now. We’re almost there.”

Claire risks a glance over her shoulder, towards the ridge they’ve been aiming for. About halfway up the slope, there’s a glowing cut in reality, ice blue where the portal between universes was golden. “We can’t--”

“I _know_ ,” Kaia says firmly. “But look--” she points at the portal again and Claire can see it. Monsters crawling their way up, aiming for the portal, a few of them getting sucked in when they reach some sort of event horizon.

“Shit.” Squeezing Kaia’s hand, she turns back to Dick. “There is no compromise, or deal, or anything else. You’re staying _here_.” Taking a deep breath, she tightens her grip on the hatchet in her free hand. “Kaia? Ready?”

Kaia nods silently beside her, twisting around so they’re back to back.

“Let’s go.”

They explode into motion. Claire whips around so she can see where she’s going, sprinting wildly hand in hand with Kaia for the portal. They get a split second’s head start before the leviathan are after them.

Claire drops Kaia’s hand, swinging her hatchet like a baseball bat into the forehead of some opportunistic werewolf, kicking him free with a well placed boot to his neck. Kaia’s mace is buried in the chest of something unrecognizable a few steps ahead. Claire helps pull it free and then they’re running again, the tide of leviathan lapping at their heels.

They have to let go of each other to scramble up the steep rocky slope, practically crawling. They’re almost at the mouth of the portal when Claire realizes their error-- Kaia can’t pass through the portal.

“Fuck,” Claire screams, batting a werewolf into the churning pool of leviathan at the foot of the hill, buying herself a little space. “Buy me time,” she orders, glancing at Kaia. “We’ll be out of here soon.”

Juggling her hatchet into her other hand, she pulls one of her other knives from her belt and drags it up her forearm. The cut burns-- there’s probably something on the knife that shouldn’t be there-- as she fumbles for the hastily memorized Latin for the spell. “Coniuncti um, sumo, no. _Shit_! Coniuncti sumus, unum… sumus!” Claire falls backwards at the jolt of pain, swinging her hatchet wildly as Kaia turns into red-golden light and streams towards her.

Dick Roman rushes up the hill, grabbing Claire’s pulsing arm and yanking her down.

Cursing, Claire reaches around, buries her hatchet in Dick’s arm. “Let go of me, asshole.”

He recoils, letting go of her arm, but pushing her further downhill.

Claire sucks in a deep breath before she’s surrounded. She loses her hatchet after just a few swings, reducing her to a knife and her fists.

The werewolves and vampires are gone-- either run away or consumed by the leviathan-- and it’s just her and the leviathan who can’t keep a single face. She’s losing, barely keeping hold of consciousness as she drops to her knees, wrapping her arms around her head and torso, trying to figure out how the fuck she’s going to get out of this.

Dick’s hand clamps down on her shoulder, pausing the onslaught and hauling her to her feet. “I’ll let you go if you take us with you. Or, you can die. Right here.” He chuckles smugly. “You do know what happens when you die in Purgatory, Claire?”

Dropping her hands to her side, Claire spots Kaia’s mace a few feet away, still within the small clear space between her and the rest of the leviathan.

She dives forward, jerking out of Dick’s hold and coming up with the mace. She gets a couple hits in before Dick is on top of her, snarling as his mouth opens impossibly wide. Claire snatches another weapon-- not one of hers and not the obsidian and bone of Purgatory weapons either-- from the hands of a leviathan, shoves it into Dick’s neck while embedding the mace into his torso and yanking up.

Black goo pours from the gaping hole in his torso and he falls back. The rest of the tide falls back with him, spilling down and away from the portal.

Wincing, Claire takes a deep breath and sprints back towards the passage, allowing the wind to pick her up and help. Cradling the arm with Kaia’s soul carefully against her body, she flings herself through…

And lands in a heap in a dark forest.

Picking herself up, she glances around and sees only terrestrial trees-- old ones-- but no odd purple lights leading somewhere, no crashing sounds as new predators race towards her, hoping to kill her before she can stop them…

Cautiously, she picks a direction and heads that way, hoping she can find a trail or stream or something so she can get back home.

 

* * *

 

“I cannot _believe_ you, Claire. What the fuck were you _thinking_?” Jody stares at her from across the diner table. “No backup? Not even a hint of what you were doing? Just ‘hey, pick my car up for me,” Jody’s voice drops in mockery. “What if Sam hadn’t told Dean so he could tell us where you’d pop out at? _You could have been killed._ ”

“I wasn’t,” Claire says defensively. She glances down at her arm, at the light pulsing from her arm, Kaia twisting in agreement with Jody. “I had it under control.”

“Clearly,” Jody says, leaning back in her chair and crossing her arms. “The rabies and tetanus shots, thirty stitches, and broken ankle are completely under control.” Sighing, she glances out the window. “Never do that again.”

Claire shakes her head, wrapping a shaking hand around her coffee mug. “I’m not going to promise that. If she needs saving, I’m going to do it.”

“Claire, you can’t save everyone.”

Claire looks up, meets Jody’s eyes. “I don’t want to save everyone. I want to save _her_.”

Jody grits her teeth before glancing away and sighing. “Fine. Let’s get out of here. It’s a long drive back home.”

 

* * *

 

She kicks everyone out of the Bunker when she gets there, demanding space and privacy. Dean takes one look at her before nodding and herding Jack and Cas ahead of him, leaving Sam to deal with the hunters from the other world.

Claire doesn’t know what he says or does, but within an hour, she’s the only one there.

Kaia’s soul or spirit or whatever has been twisting impatiently since they reached the Bunker, irritated by how long this is taking, Claire thinks. She’s been moving as fast as she can, but Maine to Kansas can only be driven so fast.

“Jeez. Hold on,” Claire hisses while she pulls Kaia’s remains from the morgue and sets up a space for them in one of the back bedrooms-- the only ones still unused, that are so deep into the hillside that no one wants them.

Checking the placement carefully and re-reading the counterspell, Claire carefully pulls off her overshirt and drapes it over a nearby chair. “Okay. Let’s do this. Anima corpori. Fuerit corpus. Totem resurgent.” She can kinda follow the Latin-- not as well as she should be able to, but she’s not the nerd Patience is-- enough to pick out something about bodily resurgence. She drags the knife blade across her skin, releasing the red-gold light that’s been surging under her skin for three days.

Closing her eyes, she holds her arm over the still gooey corpse and prays that this goes the way it should. She’ll come up with a different option if she has to but--

A calloused hand slides over her arm, dragging it down and her into a warm embrace.

“Kaia?”

“Hey, blondie. How you doing?”

Claire lets out the breath she’s been holding and starts sobbing, burying her face into Kaia’s shoulder while Kaia awkwardly drags her, one handed, over to the (thankfully empty) bed.

“I can’t believe that worked,” Claire laugh-sobs a few minutes later, after she’s gotten the worst of the emotional outburst under control. “I knew it would but I--”

Kaia laughs a bit, pulling Claire closer. “Knowledge and faith aren’t the same.”

“Yeah. That.”

They stay cuddled close for a long time, until someone knocks on the door. “Claire? Everything okay in there?” Dean calls.

Claire gently pushes Kaia’s hair out of her face. “Everything’s… great. Go away, Dean.”

“I’m fine,” Kaia calls.

“Yeah, I don’t think Cas is gonna believe me until he sees you both, alive and whole.” Dean’s phone dings and he pauses long enough to read it. “Please tell Cas, when you see him, that I am very pointedly _not_ opening the door without the all clear.”

Rolling her eyes, Claire looks at Kaia, mere inches away. “Can I kiss you?”

Kaia squeezes her hand, leaning forward to carefully press her lips against Claire’s. It’s short and sweet, and while Claire would eagerly go for more, Kaia doesn’t seem nearly as into it.

“What’s wrong?”

“I want to explore that?” Kaia says slowly. “I do. But… can we shower first? Maybe eat something?”

Claire nods, dissolving into giggles. “Anything you want.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is the last major part of this series, which fits, since it's also the longest. Probably won't be last story in it-- I'm sure Billie is going to have some words about suborning her reapers-- but this is the one that I've been writing around until the right time came.
> 
> I'm not playing to win this month, so go ahead and kudos and comment to your heart's content.


End file.
